AMT Snapit 1:2500 U.S.S. Enterprise D

September 17th, 2023 - Hejo! After a break of... a while... I'm back, following completion of my Gallileo shuttlecraft. That project kind of took it out of me, so I was recharging, and then got into planning and building a new PC, to replace my 10-year old PC. That took all of my concentration and resources that I would normally put into modelling.

However, even as I was working on that old, TOS-style Gallileo, I was thinking that having done two TOS-era kits back to back, and looking at my shelf, it's time to head back to the 24th century! At some point in the last few months I purchased a small Enterprise D, and a Romulan Warbird. So first of all, the D! 

September 17th, 2023 - As Iunderstand it, this is basically the so-called Cadet Series model that used to be part of the 2017 7-Enterprise set (AMT 0954). Like the Enterprise C that I built last year (or 2021? I forget. I think last year).

As such, it's super simple. You get four sprues, a small dome base, and an instruction sheet the size of a postage stamp with just 4 steps. 😄 Here's the top of the saucer. 

September 17th, 2023 - Here's the bottom of the saucer with the whole neck. Note the water drops from the now-traditional hot soapy bath. By the way, I just read a post in one of the Facebook modelling groups from a guy who said he used to work in a plastics factory, explaining how when a sprue occassionally gets stuck in the mold, the operator might just yoink it out and spray the mold with silicon spray, which then pollutes the subsequent sprues and causes paint not to be able to stick nicely. Sooo, yes, I feel vindicated in giving my kits a warm water and dish soap bath every time! 

September 17th, 2023 - The third sprue, and the first actual sprue. 😄 Bottom of the engineering hull and the deflector dish. THe interesting thing that I see here is that the pylon tabs that fit into the nacelles are super super slim. Hmm. 

September 17th, 2023 - Fourth and final sprue. Top of the engineering hull and the nacelles. 

September 17th, 2023 - Three sheets of decals! Look at this crazy scene. This kit is like, 90% decals and 10% paint and glue. Obviously, at this scale we're not going to get much detail on there at all. The collimator rings are like sausages, for example. So, most of the detail comes from the decals. (Although having said all that, the Enterprise C kit had a lot more detail on it).

Anyway, here we arrive at the first decision that I've made for this kit, and that is that the decals, which are incredibly blue, do not look good with grey or silver or metallic paint. I've seen lots of these things on the 'net, and they all look completely bonkers with the blue-grey paint scheme. So, I'm going to paint it some shade of Duck Egg Blue, more like the studio model. Eggy blue plus this weird violet-blue on the decals will go together a bit better. 

September 18th, 2023 - Thought about it a bit, and decided to assemble first, then paint, then decal. I'll do the nacelles separately though. So, today (or yesterday, because it's after midnight now), I clipped the parts off their sprues, filed the edges, and glued it all together. The saucer halves have 3 really ugly mold points around the rim, and between my cheapo sprue cutters and shakey hand, I couldn't avoid eating into the saucer rim a bit... 

September 18th, 2023 - ...which you can see here. Glued together, the damage is not too bad, but putty is definitely on the menu.
 

September 18th, 2023 - A bit of flash in the neck tabs, easily removed with the scalpel. There was a little bit of flash along the curvey edges of the secondary hull top half too, but otherwise the parts were clean. 

September 18th, 2023 - The rear edge of the lower secondary hull half also has some wide mold points to cut off, but these blobs are thinner, compared to the thick, round mold points on the saucer. Sooo, easier to remove cleanly, basically. 

September 18th, 2023 - Anyway, snipped, filed, cleaned up and blobbed some Revell Contacta gel glue onto all the snap-fit points, then brushed some Tamiya Extra Thin over certain parts of the seams for extra bonding. The nacelles fit together very snugly and were no problem. The saucer went together very well too. There is one big post at about the 12 o'clock position, and if you secure that about half way first of all, you can swing the rest of the saucer halves into places and clip them together. You probably don't need the clamps, but I also ran a line of Contacta around the saucer edges for extra security. The only dodgy fit was the port side of the secondary hull, the seam of which stubbornly stayed about half a mm open. I finally managed to coerce it into a tighter fit, but I think that some acrylic putty there will be necessary. 

September 19th, 2023 - "I think that some acrylic putty there will be necessary" -- ahahaha! Yes, today was Putty Day. 😄 Most of it went around the rim of the saucer. Interestingly, when the saucer halves go together there is a very, very thin gap molded into the rim. If you look at the photo of the D that I used for the Project page for this build, then I guess that this line is the dark strip around the rim. Well, no matter how accurate it is or not (I admit that I am no expert on the Galaxy class), on the model it actually looks pretty good! Unfortunately, the three damage marks from the difficult de-sprueing seemed to be more prominent and obvious with that thin gap. Puttying just the slim lip of plastic around the edges where those sprue 'bite marks' are is beyond my skill, so I decided to just putty in the entire gap, all around the rim. It took me 5 passes to get it nicely filled in. Tomorrow I'll do a bit of light filing and then let the primer and paint and 40 million decals take care of the rest. 😄 

September 19th, 2023 - Puttying all around the join of the two secondary hull halves. 

September 19th, 2023 - Also around the top lip of the eye-shaped deflector dish. Yup. 

September 20th, 2023 - Glued the saucer to the secondary hull today. As you can see, there's a wicked seam there. So... 

September 20th, 2023 - Vallejo Acrylic Putty does a nice job there. (I'm about 3/4 through this tube, which is the first tube that I ever bought, about a year ago. I keep a needle in the nozzle, just to keep things fluid. Although, I've never felt it dry up, unlike super glue does).

I'm not too bothered about messy bits of glue and putty here and there, as long as they're smooth, because the primer, paint, and acres of decals should hide any woopsies well enough. 😄 

September 20th, 2023 - So, 10 days later and I've finished the puttying, I've primed it with what I realize now is my favourite primer - Citadel Grey Seer - and have painted the base colour, which is Tamiya AS5 - Light Blue (Luftwaffe).

This is my compromise colour, which is closer to the studio model than the final on-screen metallic-silvery effect, without really being close to either colour at all. 😄 It's the closest thing that Tamiya has in a spray can to any of the legendary Duck Egg Blue, or Robin's Egg Blue shades that some of the actual Trek Studio models used.

I'm happy with the puttying on the neck and sides, but the saucer rim is still quite rough. I had thought that the layers of primer and paint would sort that out, but perhaps I overestimated that effect. Never mind, we'll see what the decals can bring to the equation next. 🙂 

October 3rd, 2023 - (Posted on the 5th) I almost sprayed the initial gloss coat without painting the details. 😄 Anyway, here we see my go-to engine colour paints: Vallejo Blood Red 72.010 for the Bussard collectors and the red on the deflector dish; Humbrol Aquacolor - Light Blue on the field grilles, and a mixture of Vallejo Hammered Copper 72.059 and Polished Gold 72.055 on that ribbed part. I mixed those two because the Copper on its own looked a little too dark, so although the Gold didn't do much to lighten that up, its metallic flakes settled in the grooves and gave it a nice look anyway.

Later on I used the tip of a knife to carefully scrape the excess paint off, although I'm not too bothered by the overpainting because the wallpaper - sorry, decals - go right to the edge of every part. 

October 4th, 2023 - (Posted on the 5th) - Now with added Tamiya TS-13 gloss! Later today I might start laying down the 80 million decals. 

October 5th, 2023 - Guess what I did today? Started start laying down the 80 million decals! 😄 First of all, the underside of the nacelles. Each nacelle has 5 deals on their underside - the 'fingernail' at the end on the Bussard collector, and then each length-ways decal is actually two pieces. So, four total on the main body of the thing.

One thing that made me a bit nervous about this job is that I had forgotten that I have like, 2 mm of Micro Sol left in the bottle. Fortunately, the last time I was at the modelling shop I tried to buy some, and although they were sold out, the dude recommended me a new (?) product by the 'AMMO of Mig Jimenez' company. It's two small glass bottles that work like Micro Sol and Micro Set, and they even have brushes in the cap, like eyelash makeup. 😄 (The brushes are too small and stiff to be any good, but it's the thought that counts).

I took these photos a few minutes after applying the setting liquid, and they don't look too bad. Now, many hours later, they look even better.  

October 5th, 2023 - Anyway, I put two big body pieces on the top of the secondary hull next. These were very difficult to get into place, because they have curved edges and the model has curves and everything is curvy and argh. So I put the port side decal down first, and I just couldn't get it to line up with the edge of the model. If you look at that bottom edge, you can see that compared to the edge of the decal on the starboard side, the windows do not line up very well. Anyway, the effect is not too noticeable I hope, and later on I took the edge of the knife and scraped off the overhanging decal, so now it kind of looks not too bad really. I mean, these decals are a flipping kaleidoscope of colours and shapes, so everything looks normal anyway. 😄  

October 6th, 2023 - Back to the nacelles today. Here we see the tops, which are all one piece, thankfully. The pinstripe and logo is a separate decal, but they're Easy Mode compared to the rest of it. 😄

Oh, and you do get 8 tiny yellow squares that go on the rear ends of the nacelles - 4 each - which I suspect are RCS thrusters. But I really can't be arsed applying them tbh. We'll see tho. Maybe later.  

October 6th, 2023 - Next, I put the two 'wing' decals on to the pylons, the two 'quarter' decals either side of the main impulse engine, two smaller, wider decals that go either side of those two, and two 'spine' decals up the middle. Everything fit very nicely, except that with the wing decals I first noticed that the printed details don't always line up with the molded details on the hull. In this case, you see those two pinky-gold rectangles near the back? If you look closely you can see where they should ideally line up with molded rectangles on the hull there, but don't quite. If you did line those decals up with the rectangles, they would hang off the back of the model a bit. Which is not really what we want, is it? 😄

(Actually, I realize now that some combination of lights and phone cameras are causing some of these photos to look more violet-pink than they are. In reality, those pinky-gold rectangles are just gold). 

October 6th, 2023 - After all of that, I moved on to the upper saucer, which is divided by the collimated phaser ring into inner and outer segments, each of which has four decals. First, one long decal runs around the back in the outer ring, and here I was careful to line it up as centrally as possible, so that the remaining outer segment decals would also line up nicely. I *think* that in one of the YouTube vids I watched ages ago about this kit (possibly by ModelChili inNZ), he talked about where to start with the saucer decals in order to get them lined up well, but I only remembered that this would be a good thing to watch again as I was half way through all this job. 😄 

October 6th, 2023 - I think that, in the end, I did a not too bad job, at least with alignment. The 'Decal Set' liquids by AMMO of Mig seem to work quite well, so that helps a lot. The front pair of decals in the outer segment are also quite long and I had to wrestle them on a bit, lifting and reapplying a couple of times. You need to let them soak quite a while too, because these thick, juicy decals sometimes have a hard time coming off when they're so long.

As I was looking at this thing today, I also realised that I will have to paint the phaser strip by hand. Yikes! XD 

October 7th, 2023 - Today I flipped it over and wallpapered the bottom half. Started with the saucer, which like the upper half, is basically eight 1/4 pieces with a longer piece at the front and two 'collar' pieces by the neck, aaand one big oval one over the lower down and a small oval for the Captain's Yacht. Everything went smoothly, although despite my best efforts there is still some misalignment. 😄 But there are no gaps between the pieces, which is what I was really worried about, so I'll count it as a win. 😄 

October 7th, 2023 - Moving backwards, there are two halves on the belly, with a pendant and pinstripes that goes in that empty space. The most satisfying decal I've ever applied in my life comes next - all of that aft section, up the nacelle pylons to the tabs, is one giant bird-shaped decal! That was good fun putting that one on. 😄 

October 8th, 2023 - And now, a cautionary tale. Each side of the neck has 3 decals *rolly eyes emoji* An upper piece, lower piece, and a short, solid 'stripe shape'. (There should also be a tiny 'Enterprise' name that goes in a tiny gap there too). Anyway, what happened was that I applied the two main half-pieces upside down. 😄 It's an awkward spot to be decalling, and the box art is a little hard to read on the neck, so.... yeah, excuses, excuses. 😄 I did manage to turn the upper piece around, but the lower one was firmly stuck on. So, look at this mess... 

October 8th, 2023 - ...and now see how it should look. 😄 (When I photograph this thing at the end, remind me not to get too close to the starboard side of the neck). 😄

I have actually finished all of the decalling as of now. There are a few tiny decals that I left off -- the 8 tiny yellow RCS squares, the tiny name on easch side of the neck, and four tiny yellow squares, which I can't for the life of me see where they go. 😄 (Maybe RCS thrusters for the saucer? idk).

Anyway, overall the whole process went quite smoothly. Even so, the upper and lower saucers do look slightly out of line. It's these gold grille-looking rectangles you see, they betray the symmetry or lack of it very easily. I think that if I was going to do this model again, I would start with the front decals that have those gold grilles on them, and make sure they were exactly either side of the centre line of the ship. (You can see this quite clearly 6 pictures back). 

October 10th, 2023 - Final steps! With the second gloss coat forming a nice, hard, dry shell over the decals, I start masking all the phaser strips and prepare to paint them the same Vallejo Hammered Copper (72.059) as the details on the nacelles. It's a good colour for showing 24th-century nacelles that are not at warp. Of course, I painted mine blue to show the ship travelling at warp speed. But at the last second, I thought that perhaps we need some more variety in our colouring, so I masked up those nacelles again and painted them Vallejo Polished Gold (72.055). I've seen lots of these Galaxy class ships with gold nacelle details, and I don't know how accurate that is, but it looks good, and anyway the colours on this model are already insane, so, eh. 

October 10th, 2023 - Then I masked all the small phaser strips all over the ship. I decided to place the tape over the strips, and then slice around the shape of the strip. With a new knife blade and only careful pressure on the tape (Tamiya), I managed this without too obviously slicing up the gloss coat too. With the paint on, any small cuts are nicely hideen too.

Finally, I masked up the big rings on the top and bottom of the saucer, and here I made a slight mis-step. I had just enough 6mm tape to do one big ring. All the small strips I'd covered with 3mm tape. But the wider tape is more useful for the long strips on the saucer. The thing I did that was - not wrong, but not really helpful - was to use the last of my 6mm tape on the bottom of the saucer first. Slicing the ring shape out of the tape was then very easy. But on top, I had to apply two rows of 3mm tape and it got quite complex and crazy, and ultimately produced a slightly untidier mask compared to what I achieved on the bottom - where people are less likely to look. 😄 Oh well. Another note for the future. 🙂 

October 11th, 2023 - This morning I peeled off the tape, tidied up a few small bits of over-painting (again, the gloss coat meant that I could gently scrape off the paint without causing visible damage), and glued the nacelles on. Port side went on perfectly, but starboard side has a slight tilt to it. *sigh* 

October 11th, 2023 - Oh well! I then glued the swivel joint into the base of the ship, jammed the whole thing onto its stand, and here it is! Of course, there is one final step, and that is to lay down the matt varnish, to take that crazy toy-like shine off, and then she'll go up on the shelf with the 1:2500 Enterprise C and Columbia NX. Yay! 

October 12th, 2023 - Beauty shots! I still haven't worked out a really good photo-taking strategy, but the models tend to look quite good in direct sunlight. The Hammered Copper really contrasts nicely with the hull colour and decals. 

October 12th, 2023 - Ultimately, I think the Tamiya AS5 - Light Blue (Luftwaffe) worked out well with the crazily blue-tinted Aztec decals on top, and that's all I really wanted to achieve with this build. 

October 12th, 2023 - So, a good test of your decalling skills, and also of your puttying skills. After I had painted it I noticed so many more gaps and cracks that I could have puttied but didn't notice. Oh well, c'est la vie. As they say in the 24th century... 

October 12th, 2023 - "Engage!"